Ridding Ourselves of Rules

"Remember when you said yes to Jesus the first time? You didn't know all the rules, but you knew Jesus. Sadly, the church immediately stepped in and told us we needed to know more than Jesus; we needed to know the rules of the Christian faith, otherwise we might end up in confusion and spiritual anarchy. The church is always worried we might make a mistake!"

"Every time the disciples started establishing rules - no children near Jesus; Don't let the crowd touch Jesus; Don't talk to Samaritan women; Don't let people waste expensive perfumes - Jesus told them to knock it off, and His rebuke was usually followed by a lecture that said, 'You still don't get it! We are not substituting religious rules with our rules. We are substituting religious rules with Me!' Jesus kept saying 'Follow Me,' not 'Follow My rules.'

"So most of us have spent our Christian lives learning what we can't do instead of celebrating what we can do in Jesus"

~ Mike Yaconelli, Dangerous Wonder